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This study aims to examine the objectivity of accounting professionals based in India.

To examine the objectivity of accountants based in India, this study performs an experiment using a well-established instrument from prior literature. The authors asked accounting professionals based in India to act as either the seller or buyer in a hypothetical acquisition scenario. Participants were asked to evaluate the obsolescence of an apparel company’s inventory, assessing both the probability of inventory obsolescence and the likelihood they would propose an inventory write-down.

The results indicate external auditors and tax professionals were able to remain objective, reflected in the consistency of their assessments across the buyer and seller conditions. Internal auditors were less objective, evaluating inventory obsolescence as more likely when their client was considering buying a subsidiary than when their client was considering selling a subsidiary. Internal auditors were also more likely to recommend an inventory write-down adjustment when hired by the buyer than when hired by the seller.

This study informs regulators and accounting professionals. Offshoring has “prompt(ed) questions regarding the factors that affect the quality of work in India” (Dickey et al., 2022, p. 680). While the authors do not prescribe specific actions, this study provides evidence on the decision-making process of accounting professionals based in India that regulators might use to craft policy. Furthermore, this study responds to calls for additional evidence on the decision-making process of accounting professionals based in India (Spilker et al., 2016; Mohapatra et al., 2015), and for evidence on the objectivity of internal auditors (Burt and Libby, 2021; Stewart and Subramaniam, 2010).

This study seeks to examine the influence of the gamut of changes that have taken place in the past 15 years in the world of international football that have permanently transformed football from a game into a real business, while also considering some specific events that have affected Italian football in terms of the valuation of players' registration rights in the financial statements of the leading Italian football clubs throughout the period 1996‐2009.

The research was conducted taking into account the leading Italian clubs. The clubs considered were those that, in the period examined, qualified at least five times for a place in the Italian Serie A championship which is instrumental to their direct participation, or through the qualifying round, in the Champions League.

The research shows that questionable window dressing policies, consisting of artificially overestimated values of players' registration rights, aggravated the Italian football crisis that exploded during the 2001/2002 season. However, the origins of this crisis must be ascribed to the inability of Italian teams to control players' wages.

The study concerns only the leading clubs and examines the value of players' registration rights as an aggregate, as it is not always possible to extrapolate from financial statements the values attributed to individual players.

The Italian legal system, unlike others, establishes for corporations, the obligation to recapitalize if losses exceed a certain level. Based on this particular regulation, this research, suggesting a different interpretation of events, identifies the window dressing policies implemented by Italian football clubs during the period in question as behavior designed to evade the obligation to cover losses, and highlights the real purpose of the exceptional measures undertaken by the Italian legislator to save the entire industry.

This paper aims to study the impact of (regulatory and nonregulatory) liquidity on contingent convertible (CoCo) issuance and the relationship between CoCos and asset quality.

The analysis of this study comprises two stages. In the first stage, the authors used a logit model to test whether banks with riskier assets as well as lower solvency and (regulatory and nonregulatory) liquidity are more likely to issue CoCos. In the second stage, the authors used univariate analysis and fixed effects regression to measure the impact of Additional Tier 1 (AT1) CoCos on the quality of the issuer’s assets.

The study shows that regulatory liquidity ratios are negatively related to CoCo issuance. This study also finds that the likelihood to issue CoCo is higher when banks have lower regulatory capital or are less risky. Asset quality is found to not change significantly after the issuance. All in all, these results suggest that while solvency regulation is primarily regarded as the main motivation for CoCo issuance, liquidity regulation also matters.

Despite the fact that CoCos have been emerging as an alternative way to help banks meet regulatory capital requirements, the paper argues that the relation between liquidity regulation and CoCos should be taken into account.

This study presents an empirical analysis on the CoCos instrument, focusing on the relationship between AT1 CoCos and liquidity regulation. Therefore, it serves to fill a gap in the literature on the underlying forces behind CoCo issuance. Moreover, this study measures the impact of AT1 CoCos issuance on bank risk, particularly on the quality of the issuer’s assets.

The aim of this paper is to study the rhetoric of goodwill impairment, more specifically rhetoric, as it is constructed in the form of accounts (i.e. statements that explain unanticipated or untoward behavior). The authors argue that goodwill impairment is not only a technical matter but also a rhetorical practice by means of which external scrutiny is responded to.

The data corpus consists of explanations provided by corporations regarding impairment of goodwill. Data were collected from annual reports from companies quoted on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm, Sweden. The impairment explanations were analyzed according to a taxonomy of account types. The explanations were subjected to close reading to discern the potential rhetorical functions of the different accounts.

Seven account types are identified and discussed, namely, excuse, justification, refocusing, concession, mystification, silence and wordification.

There is a need for further research that explores the process of authorship (i.e. writing, editing, negotiating and revising) through which the texts of financial communication are produced.

The findings have implications for the future formulations of standards regarding qualitative explanations in financial reporting in general and explanations of goodwill impairment in particular.

The paper contributes to the knowledge about the use of natural language and rhetoric in financial communication.

Underground cabling has become a true alternative in construction of electricity distribution networks, even in rural areas. The increasing amount of underground installations requires strategic work that helps to define the most profitable cabling targets. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodology to consider the underground cabling process.

The paper proposes a cabling concept that covers the issues on how cabling should be carried out. The analysis is based on techno‐economic and reliability analyses. The methodology consists of several steps that together constitute the concept.

The underground cabling concept comprises several steps that can be simplified into questions: where, what, when and how the network cabling process is carried out. The analysis of these questions and the related features of the network show that different approaches to the renovation can cause significant differences in profitability between the renovation strategies.

The underground cabling concept provides a method to analyse the cabling process, and it contains several alternatives for applying the concept. Thus, the applicability of a certain method depends on the network and the objectives of the distribution system operator.

Renovation planning of the network has become common in distribution companies. Traditionally, ageing of the network has been the driver for the renovation. However, in the future, the scope of renovation planning should also include other renovation drivers, such as reliability.

The methodology proposed in the paper can be applied in the renovation and development process of distribution networks. The results are universal in the electricity distribution.

The purpose of this paper is to examine translation in the context of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by taking the example of the English term “impairment” in IAS 36, and following it into 19 translations. The paper then examines the terms used for impairment in English translations of annual reports provided by firms. Consideration is given to the best approach for translating regulations and whether that is also suitable for the translation of annual reports.

The two empirical parts of the paper involve: first, identifying the terms for impairment used in 19 official translations of IAS 36, and second, examining English-language translations of reports provided by 393 listed firms from 11 major countries.

Nearly all the terms used for “impairment” in translations of IAS 36 do not convey the message of damage to assets. In annual reports translated into English, many terms are misleading in that they do not mention impairment, peaking at 39 per cent in German and Italian reports in one year.

Researchers should note that the information related to impairment in international databases is likely to contain errors, and the authors recommend that data should be hand-collected and then carefully checked by experts. The authors make suggestions for further research.

Translators of regulations should aim to convey the messages of the source documents, but translators of annual reports should not look only at the reports but also consult the terminology in the original regulations. The authors also suggest implications for regulators and analysts.

The paper innovates by separately considering regulations and annual reports. The authors examine a key accounting term systematically into a wide range of official translations. The core section of the paper is a new field of research: an empirical study of the translations of firms’ financial statements.